Legendary Spanish auteur Víctor Erice’s long-awaited return to feature films is a mystery-fuelled meditation on cinema itself.

Spanish movie star Julio Arenas disappears in 1990 while filming The Farewell Gaze, a mystery directed by his close friend Miguel Garay. Decades later, Miguel is living off-grid as a recluse when a lurid ‘cold case’ TV show contacts him. Though he hasn’t touched a camera since Julio vanished, Miguel decides to become his own detective. As he interviews old comrades and collaborators to discover Julio’s fate, he muses on the irony that, while film can vividly bridge past and present, such a vital connection breaks if nobody’s watching.

At 83, Erice has only ever made four features – though his debut, 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive (MIFF 1974), inspired generations of filmmakers. This feature (his first since 1992) is a poignantly personal and satisfyingly layered meta-commentary on absence and legacy. Its film-within-a-film, shot on velvety 16mm, was even rumoured to contain footage repurposed from The Shanghai Spell, Erice’s own abandoned early-90s project. Having earned raves at Cannes 2023, Close Your Eyes is resounding proof that its director is not about to fade to black.

“A stirring tale about memory, identity, and friendship … The picture asks, in mesmerizing and unbearably touching fashion, what really makes a life.” – Vulture